Last week I began a series that I have agreed
to do trying to compile a fairly comprehensive exploration of the evidence
for the various sides in the never-ending debate over regional supremacy
within the college baseball ranks. This week I begin by looking at the
case for Western dominance.

By my definition, the West includes teams from California, Arizona, Oregon,
Washington, Hawaii, and Nevada. In making these definitions, I'm trying to
be both fair and accurate; as a general rule, I'm following both common
scheduling practice and conference boundaries, except in cases like the
WAC where that leads to ridiculous results. As of the 2000 season, this
region includes 31 teams. You could make a case for including the 2 New
Mexico teams and the 3 Utah teams; all of those teams are pretty close to
average, so including them doesn't change the picture much.

History

Historically, there is (and has been) no debate that this area has produced
the best baseball. By decades, here's the breakdown of national champions:

Clearly, from about 1965-1989, the national championship belonged to the
West. Moreso, based on all evidence that we have from that time, that
situation was an accurate reflection of the state of the game at the time;
the best ball was being played on the West Coast. USC won the lion's share
of those titles (they have twelve titles over all, the most of any team),
but they were far from the only good team the region had to offer; most
years most of the top five would be Western teams.

The LSU Factor

Obviously, the years 1990-2000 present a problem for those trying to make
the case for Western dominance. The region won only three of the eleven
titles during that stretch. While there were really only a couple of
completely down years in 1991 and 1996, the bulk of the titles did move
to the Southeast.

The usual counter to this is that essentially the Southeast has been a
one-team region, as LSU has won five of the seven titles to come from
the Southeast during that time. Supporters of this position claim that
the creation of one super-program does not change the overall shape of
the situation. In support of this, they note that three of LSU's titles
have been won over non-Southeastern runners-up, although only one of
those was Western.

Another facet to this is the claim that the current post-season setup has
been shaped, possibly inadvertantly, to favor those who already have
significant post-season experience, which means that LSU's string of past
championships makes it easier for them to repeat as champions as the
selection commitee sends an embarassing string of powderpuffs into Baton
Rouge any time LSU has even a top 10 quality team.

Breadth of Quality

Another claim made by Western enthusiasts is that the raw number of
championship caliber teams is greater, and that this reflects a stronger
overall depth of talent. Even during the 1990-2000 period, three West
Coast teams won the title while only two Southeastern teams did. This
claim is hard to judge because the number of teams is greatly disparate
between the West and the Southeast, but there may be some validity to it.

Related to this claim is the fact that there are basically no really weak
programs in the West. Of the thirty-one teams in the region, none of
them finished in the bottom half of the ISR's last year, for example;
the weakest Western team appears to have been St. Mary's, who finished
just above the halfway mark. There is something of a drafting effect
at work here, as teams like St. Mary's and Hawaii-Hilo benefit from
essentially having to play a tougher schedule than someone like Memphis,
probably a pretty good comp for them, but it's still impressive.

The main reason for this, I think, is that Western baseball is seen by
school administrators as more of a financial drain than it is in the East,
so marginal programs are eliminated or not started. As more and more
Eastern teams have moved into Division I or struggled to maintain their
teams, their Western equivalents in size and budget stay in NAIA ball or
drop the program. Whether this is a plus overall on the field is something
that I'm unsure of.

Mistreatment by the NCAA

The final argument that I have read for the West is that, even if the teams
are just holding their own on the field, they're so mistreated by the NCAA
that it's a miracle that they're doing that well. Again, there is at least
some truth to this, and a downside that goes with it.

The RPI's do terrible things to Western teams.
The reasons why are a whole separate column, and I honestly think it's
more a crime of ignorance than malice by the selection committee, but
as a result of the misranking of Western teams by the RPI's and the
resulting underestimation of their quality by the selection committee,
every year deserving Western teams are left out of the tournament.

Obviously, this has a negative effect, since the nature of baseball is
that any team that's actually in the tournament has a chance to advance.
It also has a mildly positive effect on the perception of Western
post-season success, since marginal teams aren't in the tournament to go
0-2 in the first place.

The claim has also been made that some NCAA rulings on conference automatic
qualifying and makeup have been aimed specifically at Western leagues; I
don't see any evidence that that's actually true, but the case is made
that the Southern and Northern divisions of the Pac-10 should have been
allowed to remain separate, despite the North's increasing non-viability.
There were a couple of case where Western conferences had to play play-in
games that shouldn't have been required, but that was an RPI problem again.

That, as best as I can make it, is the case for the West. Please let me
know what I missed.